By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Shock news from the Heartland Institute’s Ninth International Climate Change Conference: among the 600 delegates, the consensus that Man contributes to global warming was not 97%. It was 100%.
During my valedictorian keynote at the conference, I appointed the lovely Diane Bast as my independent adjudicatrix. She read out six successive questions to the audience, one by one. I invited anyone who would answer “No” to that question to raise a hand. According to the adjudicatrix, not a single hand was raised in response to any of the questions.
These were the six questions.
1. Does climate change?
2. Has the atmospheric concentration of CO2 increased since the late 1950s?
3. Is Man likely to have contributed to the measured increase in CO2 concentration since the late 1950s?
4. Other things being equal, is it likely that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will cause some global warming?
5. Is it likely that there has been some global warming since the late 1950s?
6. Is it likely that Man’s emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases have contributed to the measured global warming since 1950?
At a conference of 600 “climate change deniers”, then, not one delegate denied that climate changes. Likewise, not one denied that we have contributed to global warming since 1950.
One of the many fundamental dishonesties in the climate debate is the false impression created by the Thermageddonites and their hosts of allies in the Main Stream Media (MSM) that climate skeptics would answer “No” to most – if not all – of the six questions.
That fundamental dishonesty was at the core of the Cook et al. “consensus” paper published last year. The authors listed three “levels of endorsement” supporting some sort of climate consensus.
Level 1 reflected the IPCC’s definition of consensus: that most of the global warming since 1950 was man-made. Levels 2 and 3 reflected explicit or implicit acceptance that Man causes some warming. The Heartland delegates’ unanimous opinion fell within Level 2.
Cook et al., having specified these three “levels of endorsement”, and having gone to the trouble of reading and marking 11,944 abstracts, did not publish their assessment of the number of abstracts they had marked as falling into each of the three endorsement levels. Instead, they published a single aggregate total combining all three categories.
Their failure to report the results fully was what raised my suspicions that their article fell short of the standards of integrity that the reasonable man on the Clapham omnibus would have expected of a paper purporting to be scientific.
The text file recording the results of Cook’s survey was carefully released only after several weeks following publication, during which the article claiming 97% consensus had received wall-to-wall international publicity from the MSM. Even Mr Obama’s Twitteratus had cited it with approval as indicating that “global warming is real, man-made and dangerous”.
The algorithm counted the number of abstracts Cook had allocated to each level of endorsement. When the computer displayed the results, I thought there must have been some mistake. The algorithm had found only 64 out of the 11,944 papers, or 0.5%, marked as falling within Level 1, reflecting the IPCC consensus that recent warming was mostly man-made.
I carried out a manual check using the search function in Microsoft Notepad. Sure enough, there were only 64 data entries ending in “,1”.
Next, I read all 64 abstracts and discovered – not greatly to my surprise – that only 41 had explicitly said Man had caused most of the global warming over the past half century or so.
In the peer-reviewed learned journals, therefore, only 41 of 11,944 papers, or 0.3% – and not 97.1% – had endorsed the definition of the consensus proposition to which the IPCC, in its 2013 Fifth Assessment Report, had assigned 95-99% confidence.
Now that we have the results of the Heartland Conference survey, the full extent of the usual suspects’ evasiveness about climate “consensus” can be revealed.
Cook et al. had lumped together the 96.8% who, like all 100% of us at ICCC9, had endorsed the proposition that we cause some warming with the 0.3% who had endorsed the IPCC’s proposition that we caused most of the warming since 1950.
In defiance of the evidence recorded in their own data file, they had then explicitly stated, both in their article and in a subsequent article, that 97.1% had endorsed the IPCC’s proposition.
Amusingly, 96.8% is 97% of 97.1%. In other words, 97% of the abstracts that formed the basis of the “97% consensus” claim in Cook et al. (2013) did not endorse the IPCC’s definition of the consensus, as the article had falsely claimed they did. However, those abstracts did endorse the more scientifically credible Heartland definition.
Among the unspeakable representatives of the MSM who came to the Heartland conference to conduct sneering interviews with climate “deniers” was a smarmy individual from CNN.
He asked me, in that supercilious tone with which we are all too familiar, how it was that I, a mere layman, dared to claim that I knew better than 97% of published climate scientists. I referred him to Legates et al. (2013), the peer-reviewed refutation of the notion that 97% of scientists endorse the IPCC’s assertion that most of the warming since 1950 was man-made.
The CNN reporter said that the result in Legates et al. was merely my “interpretation”. So I pointed to a row of internet booths nearby and said, “If I count these booths and find that there are, say, 12 of them, and if you count them and find there are indeed 12 of them, then our finding is not a matter of interpretation. It is a matter of fact, that any third party can independently verify.”
I challenged him to go away, before he broadcast anything, and count how many of the 11,944 abstracts listed in the Cook et al. data file were marked by the authors themselves as falling within Level 1. If he counted only 64, I said, then his count would accord with mine. And our counts would not be an “interpretation” but a fact, whose truth or falsity might readily and definitively be established by any third party performing exactly the same count as ours.
He said he would check, but with that look in his eye that seemed to speak otherwise.
The results of my survey of the 600 Heartland delegates reveal that the difference between the Thermageddonites and us is far less than they would like the world to think. Like most of them, we fall within Cook’s endorsement levels 2-3. Unlike them, we do not claim to know whether most of the global warming since 1950 was man-made: for that is beyond what the current state of science can tell us.
Above all, unlike them we do not misreport a 0.3% consensus as a 97.1% consensus.
You may like to verify the results recorded in Cook’s data file for yourself. I have asked Anthony to archive the file (it resides here: cook.pdf ).
[UPDATE: David Burton writes: I’ve put the Cook 2013 data into an Excel spreadsheet, which makes it a lot easier to analyze than from that cook.pdf file. There’s a link to it on my site, here: http://sealevel.info/97pct/#cook ]
If the reporter from CNN who interviewed me reads this, I hope he will perform the count himself and then come back to me as he had undertaken to do. But I shall not be holding my breath.
lawrence Cornell says:
July 13, 2014 at 10:29 pm
I HAVE ADDRESSED ALL OF THIS REPEATEDLY AND CLEARLY.
What other response could one expect, but that does not make it true.
Richard D says:
July 13, 2014 at 10:32 pm
Likely Monckton is snug in bed
‘Likely’ like in his questions?
From lawrence Cornell on July 13, 2014 at 10:29 pm:
So says the person screaming all-caps on the internet. I know who my mother would say is the one acting childish.
“‘Likely’ like in his questions?”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
No, likely he’s snug in bed and you’re trolling his thread, try to keep up.
lsvalgaard says:
July 13, 2014 at 8:27 am
David A says:
July 13, 2014 at 8:07 am
DA, Really? Did you see the title of the post?
============================
I see that I can count you as one of Monckton’s sheep that Jennifer was talking about.
===========================================================
Leif that is a “sneer” just as I earlier explained to you that the broad scale swipes at WUWT posters in general, which you and Mosher engage in, to be sneers. By the way, the tile of the post refers to the 97% studies. Yet my pointing this our to you received no acknowledgement of that, but a sneer and personal attack.
My posts to you were very simple criticisms of what I perceive as poor arguments…
1. The informal pole was NEVER represented to be scientific, but intended to make a simple point;
that skeptics also overwhelming answer yes, just like the warmist brigade does, to the over simple unscientific questions purported to be answered in the pseudo scientific 97% poles. (Since that was the simple dual purpose of the question put to the skeptical community, Monckton was not “falling to their level” or any BS sophistry)
2. Those pseudo 97% studies were passed off as scientific by the peer review community, and they were circulated worldwide by the LSM.
3. Christopher Monckton never intended this simple pole to do anything except demonstrate that skeptics to not fall under the “denier” label you and Mosher regularly broad-brush them with, and to point out a clear flaw in the 97% consensus studies. ( many posters here clearly got that message and tried to tell you this,)
The rest of the various posters arguments about the nuances of the questions are strictly academic, and not related to point 1. I also pointed out that folk explaining their views of those nuances were not using “weasel words” (as Mosher commented and you supported) but were adding necessary detail to make the scientific cogency of those questions relevant. (You also agreed that without further definition the questions were not of relevant scientific merit.)
From Richard D on July 13, 2014 at 10:32 pm:
Monckton made an honest living as a journalist and then as an entrepreneur who founded a business selling quality shirts. I am certain he is far too practical and intelligent to acquire such a money pit as a castle.
davidmhoffer says:
July 13, 2014 at 10:03 pm
————————————
“I’m going to try one last time to actually help you. Not by telling you what I think the answer is, but by suggesting you research two things:
1. What the meaning of effective blackbody temperature is in the context of a planet with an atmosphere, and;
2. What the temperature of earth is as seen from space.
Either you’ll have an aha! moment, or you won’t.”
David, been there, done that. For a planet at 1 AU having a thick radiative atmosphere like earth and receiving an average of 240 w/m2 the temperature as seen from space should be ~255K.
Does this tell you anything about whether the atmosphere is warming or cooling the surface below. No, for that you would need to know more about the surface materials of the planet. Assumptions like “the surface is a near blackbody” or “we can just use lapse rate and an imaginary ERL to back calculate surface temperature” are both dead ends.
Imagine a polished aluminium planet (e= 0.05) reviving an average of 240 w/m2 with no atmosphere. Average surface temp would be above 500K. Now add a thick radiative pure methane atmosphere. The surface temp will drop. What temperature would it now appear from space? ~255K 😉
Without knowing the true surface response to solar radiation and DWLWIR, you cannot know whether the atmosphere is warming or cooling the surface. In the case of our planet, the “near blackbody” assumption about our oceans is an unrecoverable mistake.
Have a look at this very simple experiment run by Texas A&M in 1965 –
http://oi62.tinypic.com/1ekg8o.jpg
They tried making layer 2 matt black for better UV/SW absorption. It did not work as well at heating as having layer 3 black. If such an experiment were run under simulated solar cycle with layer 2 black and no DWLWIR average temperatures would be below zero. Layer 2 clear and layer 3 black is a game changer. Average surface temperature would easily climb beyond 15C.
Now how do the climate modelling assumptions treat our oceans? Layer 2 black or layer 3?
Exactly … except for the arguments he put forth, several reasons why it’s a bad poll.
David A says @ur momisugly July 13, 2014 at 11:09 pm:
“Leif that is a “sneer” just as I earlier explained to you that the broad scale swipes at WUWT posters in general, which you and Mosher engage in, to be sneers.”
Amen!
Yeah, I went back it and reread it for the hell of it, and I didn’t see that either.
I was originally going to cite this post as it made the point I was trying to make elsewhere, but the poll was too loaded for my taste so just had to make my statement without this backing.
Anyway, most skeptics are as Christopher Monckton says, but quite a few of the blog commenters (here and elsewhere) dismiss AGW more than can be supported by the science and reason. While the poll wasn’t properly structured, count me down with its consensus just the same.
Christoph Dollis says:
July 13, 2014 at 11:56 pm
The posting did not say that the poll was non scientific. Show where it said that.”
Yeah, I went back it and reread it for the hell of it, and I didn’t see that either.
=================================
The posting also made no attempt to say the poll was scientific. The verbal poll was done for a clear and simple two-fold purpose as explained numerous times….
1. Skeptics also overwhelming answer yes, just like the warmist brigade does, to the over simple unscientific questions purported to be answered in the pseudo scientific 97% poles.
2. Those pseudo 97% studies were passed off as scientific by the peer review community, and they were circulated worldwide by the LSM, yet even with setting aside their horrible methodology, they asked the wrong questions, which even skeptics overwhelmingly answer in the same manner.
It is that simple.
@ur momisugly David A says:
July 14, 2014 at 1:32 am
Exactly! Thank you for saying the obvious.
Since co2/climate science and Data has been politicized with the UNFCCC to promote political agendas my answers would be.
If one can not scientifically measure or quantify values, antroproghenic CO2 and temperature, that can be validated again and again the whole debate is unscientific.
1. YES
2. YES
3. Don’t know
4. Don’t know
5. YES
6. Don’t know
davidmhoffer says, July 13, 2014 at 6:57 pm:
“If YOUR physics was right, jungles at the equator would be colder on average than deserts at the equator, but they aren’t.”
Oh, yes they most certainly are. Where on Earth did you get the idea that they’re not? Mean annual temperatures in tropical rainforest areas are consistently lower by several degrees than in tropical/subtropical desert areas. Because of the higher atmospheric water content.
davidmhoffer says, July 13, 2014 at 10:03 pm:
“2. What the temperature of earth is as seen from space.”
The Earth doesn’t have a ‘temperature’ ‘as seen from space’. It emits an average radiation flux to space. This flux is not tied to some specific temperature. It is a consequence of the energy balance between the Sun and the Earth. Since 240 W/m^2 is the mean flux the Earth system absorbs, then it is also the mean flux it needs to shed back to space. It does so from all levels, from the surface all the way up to the ToA. The mean flux is a cumulative flux from the Earth system as a whole, not an S-B (BB) flux from one specific layer with a correspondingly specific S-B temp.
David A says:
July 13, 2014 at 11:09 pm
1. The informal pole was NEVER represented to be scientific, but intended to make a simple point;
This is a straw man. I never said that it was science [quite the contrary] or that it should have been science, even though the poll was touted as an analogue to the ‘97%’ poll which was supposed to be scientific. My point in general is that the questions were cleverly posed to achieve the intended propaganda effect, and that the ‘result’ was probably not even representative of the opinion of the audience [c.f. Jennifer]. Contrast the propaganda effect of ‘the consensus is not 97% it’s 100%’ with [the more correct] ‘the consensus is not 97% it’s 95%’. So, the poll was a PR-stunt, and this is not a way to conduct the debate or to ‘fight the good fight’. Better to be a ‘sneering’ lion than a bleating, corralled sheep.
I am going to stick my neck out and say that I am very close to answering the First Question (does climate change): NO.
Of course, it depends what you mean by climate change. Globally, there are only two climate states, glacial and interglacial.
Climate is regional, not global, and the problem is that it is a band and a band within which there is much year to year, even multidecadal variation.
The problem here is that climate is not about a few tenths of a degree of temperature. Nor is it something that can be assessed and measusred over a 30 year period. Given tectonic movement, and glacial events, climate is something measured over thousands of years (possibly even longer).
One has to ask oneself whether there has been any climate shift of any country in the past few hundred years? If so which country, and from which band to which band (Koppen/Koppen-Geiger/Trewartha classification etc)?
The reality is that there has been no climate change this past century. If one looks at the past climate of countries over say two thousand years, there have been periods of warming, periods of cooling, dry periods, wet periods, examples of extreme (in relative terms) flooding, examples of extreme (in relative terms) drought, examples of exceptional (in relative terms) harsh winters, examples of exceptional (in relative terms) hot summers. There is a large variability, within the climate band for each country, and if what we are seeing today, is nothing more than what we have seen in the past, that is not climate change.
I would like the warmists to list which countries have undergone climate change, this past century, when compared to the historic climate characteristics of that country over the past few thousand years, detailing the change undertaken and from which climatatic regional band the country has shifted from, and into which climatic regional band that country now sits.
Richard
I wrote an article on exactly this subject last year.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/26/noticeable-climate-change/
Whilst climate changes continually it all just seems to go round in a circle. The current decade in the UK is very similar to that of the 1730’s which caused phil jones to ruefully reflect that natural variability was much greater than he had expected.
The problem is that we tend to look at either the very short term-the satellite record-or the very long term-millions of years. Our human historical context has been submerged in the belief of Dr Mann’s unchanging climate over the last 1000 or more years until ‘WE’ ruined things.
Of course, ‘anecdotal’ evidence that would help to provide proper context to wild climatic claims is much derided
tonyb
So there are still people who think you can live on a planet without impacting on its climate.
Interesting*
YYYYYY
Q7 Do you think accurately predicting future temperature based on historical records, however accurate the record, is nugatory (Y)
*Frightening
Kristian;
The Earth doesn’t have a ‘temperature’ ‘as seen from space’. It emits an average radiation flux to space. This flux is not tied to some specific temperature.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The average radiation flux to space IS the effective black body temperature. Looks like you need remedial physics as bad as Konrad,
davidmhoffer says, July 14, 2014 at 6:29 am:
“The average radiation flux to space IS the effective black body temperature. Looks like you need remedial physics as bad as Konrad,”
Is it indeed? A flux is a temperature. Nice one.
So where is this e=1, 255K BB surface of Earth emitting the 240 W/m^2 flux to space?
Being able to use the S-B equation to calculate a theoretical specific emission temperature based on a measured mean radiation flux doesn’t mean you’re describing a real-world direct flux/temp relation.
You know of course that Earth’s atmosphere is not a black body? Or don’t you? A constantly churning volume of gas heated from below is not comparable to a solid-surface black body. And a solid solar-heated surface (like Earth’s) in direct thermal contact (convectively coupled) to air (with or without radiatively active gases) can never be a purely radiative situation, what all radiative laws (e.g. Stefan-Boltzmann, Planck, Kirchhoff) strictly describe. Because of something called conduction > convection (on earth also evaporation).
Kristian;
You know of course that Earth’s atmosphere is not a black body? Or don’t you?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
What part of suggesting that Konrad research the meaning of effective black body temperature of a planet with an atmosphere did you miss?
All of it apparently.
Kristian;
Is it indeed? A flux is a temperature. Nice one.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Precisely how do you think the temperature of a body in space is arrived at? By satellites and telescopes extending a thermometer a thousands or millions of kilometers and sticking it under the bodies tongue? Are you daft? The temperature of a body in space can be measured by taking the mix of energy fluxes being emitted from the body and converting it into a temperature.
Your argument is as stupid as claiming that a thermometer under one’s tongue cannot take temperature because it is full of Mercury which merely expands when warmed. ALL temperature measurements are arrived at by an indirect means than in one way or another converts an energy flux into temperature, these are only two examples. By your argument, the thermostat in your house doesn’t measure temperature (but it does) and neither does the local weather station (but it does).
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
July 13, 2014 at 10:50 pm
From lawrence Cornell on July 13, 2014 at 10:29 pm:
ARE YOU A CHILD, SERIOUSLY ? BECAUSE YOU ARE NOW ACTING LIKE ONE.
So says the person screaming all-caps on the internet. I know who my mother would say is the one acting childish.
_____________________________________________________________________________
If my mother had said or written something and I refused to acknowledge that she ever said it or denied its very existence in spite of the written words sitting in front of me, I would expect her to be a bit frustrated and yell at me a bit.
Has the education and upbringing on this globe deteriorated to the point where simply ignoring statements made or pretending, yes pretending to understand something wrongly, or just not see it is now accepted as standard truth finding procedure. Is that how we find the truth now ?
Are we here to win a debate or find the truth ?
NO, they are not the same.
Having said that … you are right on your point. I am not proud. I lost it and shouldn’t have.
First, I want to thank Mr Burton for having kindly translated the Cook et al. data file from its original comma-delimited format to an Excel spreadsheet to make it easier for non-programmers to handle.
Next, I want to report a conversation I have had with the operator of another climate-skeptical blog who has noticed that a small band of sophisticated trolls, inferentially paid for their efforts, is attacking not only the head postings at this and other blogs, however reasonable those postings may be, but also – in sneering and often savage tones – anyone who dares to show signs of supporting the head postings or opposing the Party Line on global warming.
No small part of the strategy of the promoters of the climate scam has been their relentlessly vicious mistreatment of those of us with whom they find it profitable to disagree. Lenin used to recommend that any lie should be told as long as it assisted the march of Communism, and that the opponents of the Party Line should be personally denigrated. His devoted follower Saul Alinsky says the same in his “Rules for Radicals”.
The intention of these trolls is to try to ensure that anyone who dares to question the Party Line should have his reputation destroyed, or should be bullied into silence, so that others who might otherwise speak out remain silent because they are fearful for their reputations.
One of these trolls persists in making a pest of himself here, and in venomously attacking not only me (I have broad shoulders) but many others on this thread, even though I know Anthony has warned him to moderate his language.
So I should like to ask all those who wish to post their views here to consider themselves welcome to do so, and not to allow themselves to be deterred by bullies. And I should like to ask those who have been less than polite toward those with whom they disagree to acquire a little civility. There is a growing feeling in some quarters that WUWT has become a no-go area because the trolls have been so successful in sneering at even the most innocent of passers-by who take the chance to make a polite point and are cruelly savaged for it.
A little more moderation and civility all round, please. And I hope that Anthony will now give a clear and final warning to the worst offender here.
From Konrad on July 13, 2014 at 11:44 pm:
No.
What’s the maximum temperature you can get without an atmosphere? Albedo of zero, everything is absorbed. Energy in equals energy out, of course.
Stefan-Boltzmann law says radiation emitted equals SB constant times effective radiating temperature raised to the fourth power, SB constant is about 5.67*10^-8 W/(m^2*K^4).
Total Solar Irradiance at top of atmosphere is about 1360 W/m^2, if the Earth were a flat disk perpendicular to the Sun’s rays. Area of flat disk is pi*r^2, surface area of sphere is 4*pi*r^2, so average solar radiation t.o.a. is TSI/4. We will use that value for your metal planet at 1 AU with the same radius as the Earth.
So TSI/4 = SBC * T^4
1360/4 = 5.67E-8 * T^4
340 / 5.67E-8 = 6.00E9 = T^4
278K = T
Maximum effective temperature is only 278K, 6°C. How could that polished aluminum planet possibly be 500K? By Stefan-Boltzmann it would have 3,540 W/m^2 outgoing radiation, and it does not receive a tenth of that.
So what is the source of the extra energy?
lsvalgaard says:
“This whole thing was clearly a PR-stunt and carries no significance.”
Just as Cook’s “study” was.